MARJORIE FLEMING: A Sketch. Being the Paper Entitled Pet Marjorie, A Story of Child Life Fifty Years Ago... New Edition, with Illustrations

Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1884. 4to. [8], 40 pages, including half-title, plus color frontispiece portrait and six full-page engraved plates. Original olive-green cloth over beveled boards, stamped in gilt and black; top edge gilt; yellow-coated endpapers. [28.7 cm.] Very good. Light soiling to covers; very light foxing to prelims and final plate (bound after the last page of text); still a respectable copy. FIRST OF THIS ILLUSTRATED EDITION. Copies in the original cloth are a bit scarce; the work is more often found in printed paper-covered boards. The text was originally printed as an article in the "North British Review" (Nov. 1863), and several separate editions followed. The frontispiece portrait is a reproduction of a watercolor, presumed to be the work of Miss Isabella Keith, who was Marjorie's adored, teenage cousin. The other six plates reproduce pencil sketches by Warwick Brookes (1808-1882) of Manchester, who drew them for the author. Marjorie (or Marjory) Fleming (1803-1811) was a young lady of extraordinary precocity who enthralled Victorians with her poetry, her diaries, and the story of her life, which supposedly included a friendship with Sir Walter Scott. She died of measles at the age of 8. Her journals were first published in 1858 by H.B. Farnie and thus began the posthumous fascination with Marjorie. Her fame was further enhanced by the present account by Dr. John Brown (1810-1882), an Edinburgh physician and a noted essayist. It is here that the story of her friendship with Sir Walter Scott took shape. While this account of the Fleming-Scott relationship was affirmed by Leslie Stephen in his entry for Marjorie in the "Dictionary of National Biography," and thus memorialized for posterity, later scholars have argued that it has little basis in fact. (See Kathryn Sutherland, "Marjory Fleming," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). Whatever the veracity of Dr. Brown's sketch, it helped inspire a widespread fascination with Marjorie that was shared by the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson, Algernon Swinburne, and Mark Twain. The present, wide-margined edition, with the charming pictures of childhood by Brookes, was the most attractive presentation of the work.